


transported into a dream world

by elumish



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: College Student Yuri, Future Fic, Gen, Identity Reveal, M/M, POV Outsider, Retirement, Teacher Yuuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 18:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11041725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: The Russian kid in Anna’s Advanced Japanese class keeps glaring at the TA.





	transported into a dream world

**Author's Note:**

> There is hover text for the Japanese.

The Russian kid in Anna’s Advanced Japanese class keeps glaring at the TA.

To be fair, he’s not really a kid, but he looks like a freshman, which is weird for anyone who isn’t at least of Japanese heritage in these classes. His Japanese is good, though, tinged by a thick Russian accent but grammatically correct and fairly articulate. He’s respectful enough to the sensei, but during their speaking practice classes he never looks happier than a glower.

The TA doesn’t seem to notice, treating the kid just is cheerfully as he treats the rest of the class.

A few weeks in, Anna finally gives in and asks, “Why do you hate Katsuki-san”—on the first day he asked them not to call him sensei, with a stumbling explanation about how he wasn’t really a teacher, only a native Japanese speaker—“so much?”

The kid looks at her, snaps, “He’s getting fat,” in Japanese—the kid is the only person she’s ever met who can make Japanese sound this angry—then goes off in a rant in Russian.

Anna blinks at the TA—who is not what anyone would ever consider fat—then decides she doesn’t actually care. She just wants to pass the class and then, fingers crossed, the N3 of the JLPT. This Russian kid can be weird and fatphobic all he wants, and she’ll just judge him from afar.

Or at least three seats away.

\--

When asshole-Russian-kid comes in fifteen minutes late in the clingiest of pants and an oversized t-shirt, looking like a white suburban mom who just got divorced and is looking to seduce her next husband through strategically-planned exercise, the TA barely looks away from the board where he’s writing twenty katakana words before saying, “Sit down, Plisetsky-san. Today we’re working on translating katakana.”

Plisetsky mutters something in Russian, then walks over and slumps in the empty seat. He drops a duffle bag down next to him, leans back, and closes his eyes. Katsuki doesn’t seem bothered by his rudeness, but Katsuki never seems bothered by anything.

Once he’s done writing, he goes around the room, assigning each of them a number to translate on the board. Anna gets コンセント, which she doesn’t know, so she goes with the obvious—most of them are cognates with English—and writes ‘consent’ on the board. She’s mostly just glad not to get グラス or ガラス, because she can never keep them straight.

As she’s walking back, Plisetsky opens his eyes, squints at the board, then says, “That’s not what コンセント means.”

Anna squeezes the bridge of her nose, then says, “Why don’t you worry about your own word, first?”

“It means autograph.”

“You actually have to go write it on the board.”

He rolls his eyes at her—which, okay, rude, especially because he showed up late—then lurches up, groaning as he moves. Katsuki gives him a look of sympathy, then smiles when Plisetsky mutters something in Russian. In Japanese, Katsuki says, “Stick to Japanese in my classroom, please,” but he sounds oddly fond.

Plisetsky snaps something back in low, fast Japanese, too fast for Anna to follow, then writes ‘autograph’ next to his word, before heading over to drop back down in his seat.

When Katsuki goes over the katakana, Anna’s is in fact wrong—it’s an outlet, apparently, which makes actually no sense, especially because it comes from English according to Katsuki—and Plisetsky is right, which Anna kind of resents. This rude Russian teenager who clearly doesn’t give a shit about the class shouldn’t be this good at Japanese.

Once Katsuki has corrected everything, he says, “Everyone, please discuss your favorite activity or hobby and what you spend the most time doing.”

When he divides them up, Anna is stuck with Plisetsky, because of course she is. She’s not particularly sure how to circumtranslate metalworking, so she gestures for him to start. To her surprise, he starts talking amazingly fluently about…something. She thinks she hears ice skating once, though she’s not sure about it because she loses him at about there in his speech.

A few minutes in, he stops, looking at her expectantly, and she makes a face, then starts mumbling about “剣を金属から作る.”

Plisetsky’s eyes light up, and he starts asking questions about what kind of swords she makes and how she makes them. It’s surprisingly adorable, and he’s clearly better at following her technical explanation than she was at following his. For the first time in the speaking practice class, he actually seems engaged.

Until his phone goes off, and he checks it, mutters something in Russian, announces something in Russian to Katsuki, and heads out of the class, duffle bag in hand, Anna left behind.

Katsuki gives Anna an apologetic look, then says, “Finish your explanation to me, please.”

For the first time, Anna thinks Plisetsky and Katsuki might know each other.

\--

Anna isn’t a physics major, and honestly is not the most fond of physics—she’s more of a biology girl, when forced to choose a science—but she has to take two sciences, so she heads to her physics professor’s office a number of times during the semester, mostly in the hopes that if she’s on the verge of failing he’ll give her the benefit of the doubt if he knows she tried.

It’s how her mother got through astrophysics, apparently.

Her mother despairs at her lack of interest in the sciences. Anna despairs at her mother’s refusal to leave the country. She thinks it evens out.

Either way, she’s surprised to see Katsuki walk out of her professor’s office, talking about drag and rotational velocity and various Greek letters. He startles when he sees her, greeting her in Japanese mid-sentence about inertia, which he then continues in Japanese before trailing off at both of their looks. Finally, he says, “Thank you for the meeting, Professor Howard. 失礼しました. Coren-san, I’ll see you in class tomorrow.” He gives a short bow, then heads down the hallway and away.

Anna blinks after him, feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance, then turns to look at Dr. Howard. “I didn’t know you knew Mr. Katsuki.”

His eyebrows go up. “I’m surprised that you know him.”

“He’s a TA for my Japanese class.”

“I did know he was TAing that class,” Dr. Howard says, leading her into his office. “They stole him away from TAing my Intro to Physics class, so I suppose he would have been your TA one way or another.”

That’s a weird though, especially because she hadn’t really thought he was a physics student—she didn’t know what she thought he was studying, but it wasn’t that—so she puts it out of her head and focuses on asking about inertia.

\--

Plisetsky misses a lot of class. Or at least he misses a lot of Japanese class, but Tanaka-sensei never bats an eye, and neither does Katsuki, so Anna figures either neither teacher gives a shit or Plisetsky has some medical condition that gets him excused from class. Because most professors don’t care about class attendance, but language teachers almost always do.

And it’s not that Anna cares, but she kind of does, because this no-show Russian kid never shows up and is better at speaking Japanese than she is.

So when he shows up two weeks before the final, having not come in the entire previous week, and asks for the work that he missed, she has to take a second and breathe before she shows him the work from the previous week. He nods, then starts copying everything over to his notebook.

His handwriting is surprisingly delicate, though all of the English he writes in Russian instead. She has the thought that that’s impressive, because it means he’s translating simultaneously to write it. It doesn’t make her like him. Lots of assholes do impressive things.

When Katsuki comes into class that day, he looks tired and, frankly, a little bit sexed-out, which is an unnervingly attractive look on him. Not that Anna hadn’t already noticed that he was attractive, but she tries not to crush on her teachers because it feels creepy and will never go anyway. And, generally, she tries not to think about her teachers having sex.

But Katsuki looks like he just rolled out of bed after some really good sex and came to class that way. He’s even dressed more casually than usual, in just skinny jeans and an oversized sweatshirt with something written on it in Cyrillic.

Plisetsky gives a loud sigh when he sees him, muttering something in Russian loud enough for Katsuki to hear; Katsuki turns bright red, then busies himself writing the day’s instructions up on the board.

They definitely know each other.

Now Anna is curious.

So, despite her determination to never talk when the teacher is talking, she leans over and whispers, “What does his shirt say?”

“Russia,” he mutters back, sounding disgusted. “The Katsudon stole Vitya’s sweatshirt.” Anna blinks at him, because those were almost all words that she technically knows, but she has actually no idea what he just said. He seems to see that, because he sighs, then says, slowly and like she’s an idiot, “Yuuri stole Viktor’s sweatshirt after they おまんこした.”

Anna isn’t quite sure what that least word means, but Katsuki is now practically glowing red from his position at the board, which is when she gets it. And then she feels her face heating up, too, because 1) she doesn’t want to think about any of her professors having sex, even the one who isn’t technically a professor, and 2) she really doesn’t want this barely-an-adult thinking about their professor having sex.

So she puts her head down and pretends she didn’t actually ask that.

\--

When Anna’s sometimes-friend-with-benefits—friend-with-sometimes-benefits?—suggests they go to the local ice skating rink the weekend before finals, she almost says no. First, they don’t do date things, because they’re very much not romantically compatible, and second, she has some much work to do she might actually drown in it.

But she needs a break from her yakuza paper, because there aren’t enough sources and her Japanese still isn’t good enough to weed through most of the primary sources in any useful length of time, so she gives in.

The ice skating rink has been around for forever, but up through last year it was rundown and falling apart. Someone bought it from the old owner, though, and there’s not a whole ton to do in the town other than drink, so people have been going there all year. Rumor has it an Olympian even trains there, though Anna’s not sure who the girl is.

Anna did a bit of ice skating in high school because she couldn’t stand the new ballet instructor or doing ballet anymore at all but didn’t want to lose the athleticism or grace, but she never really got into it, and she stopped once she got to college. She still has her old skates, though, and lacing them up while waiting for Jesse to arrive feels oddly familiar.

It’s free skate at the moment, but it’s pretty empty, because most of their clientele are college students who are all busy freaking out about finals instead of skating. There are a few kids toddling around with their parents, and the employee—who she assumes is there in case anyone gets hurt—is an astoundingly attractive man in high early thirties with strikingly silver hair. He looks amazingly comfortable on the ice, skating backwards and keeping pace with one family.

Jesse’s text says he’s a few minutes away, and she doesn’t really want to wait for him, so she heads out onto the ice. It takes a little bit of time to get used to being on the ice again, and her ankles are shakier than she would like, but about halfway around the rink she gets the feel of it again, and she switches to skating backwards because she can, and frankly it’s easier.

When she’s most of the way around, the employee skates over to her, beaming at her. “Welcome to the Yu-tastic Skating Palace.” He sounds Russian, and she has the sudden disturbing thought that Russians are following her now. Or, given that she’s the one who came here, she’s following them. Which might actually be worse. “You seem to know what you’re doing.”

She shrugs, turning and almost tripping over her toe pick. He catches and steadies her without seeming to break his stride, still skating backwards. “Not really. A couple years, and it was a while ago.”

“Dance, then. I can tell by how you move.” He makes that sound suggestive, like he’s watching her body, and to her horror she finds herself blushing.

“Ballet.” She looks around for Jesse to save her from making a fool of herself in front of this truly gorgeous man, but he hasn’t arrived yet, so she’s on her own.

“Ah,” he says, “ballet. The dance of my love.” His face lights up, and then he turns into a jump, apparently just because he can. It’s damn impressive, though her ice skating capabilities—and interest—never really got past can-you-spin-and-not-die. “And pole dancing,” he adds, as though that makes any sense.

He skates back towards her, pulling out his phone from his absurdly tight pants. “Would you like to see a picture of my love, my Yurochka?” he asks, already pulling something up on his phone like he would never consider the answer being no.

Anna thinks this is possibly the most adorable things she’s ever seen in her life, and also she might be a little bit sleep-deprived, so she nods, saying, “Sure.”

He hands over his phone, and she bobbles it a bit in her gloves, but then she gets a view of what’s actually on his screen and actually almost drops it. Because on his screen is him with his arm around Katsuki on one side and Plisetsky on the other side. They all look sweaty, faces glowing with excitement, and the usual scowl is missing from Plisetsky’s face. That most of all is a goddamn miracle.

His apparently mistakes her shock for something else, because he says, “Isn’t he glorious? My Yurochka, my love, the light of my life, the heart of my soul.”

“Please tell me you’re Viktor,” she blurts out, because the idea of this man dating Plisetsky is frankly too horrifying to contemplate.

His expression grows even brighter, which she wouldn’t have thought possible, and he puts both hands to his chest. “You know my Yurochka? Has he been talking about me? What has he said?”

This man is so extra, she thinks, but says, “Plisetsky mentioned you, actually. He’s in my Japanese class. The one where Katsuki is the TA.”

Viktor doesn’t seem deterred by his boyfriend not having mentioned him, instead saying, “Oh, my sweet little Yuri mentioned me. I never thought the day would come. What did he tell you?”

“He told me Katsuki had stolen your sweatshirt.” After the two of you had sex, she thinks, but she has enough self-control not to say that. Holding her tongue around her mother has been good for something.

Viktor laughs delightedly. “Ah, that was a wonderful morning. The thing Yuuri does with his—”

“Vitya,” a voice—Katsuki’s voice—snaps, and Viktor’s head goes up, turning unerringly to where Katsuki is standing just outside the rink, glaring at him. “Remember that talk we had about what’s appropriate to share in public?”

Viktor responds in a stream of Russian, then says, “I don’t know why you won’t allow me to tell the world how amazing you are.” He skates over to where Katsuki is standing, and Anna follows because she still has his phone, and also this is better than a soap opera.

“You already do that every time we get interviewed,” Katsuki says, and wait, what, interviewed? What’s this all about. “You don’t get to brag about my sex life with one of my students.” He looks at Anna, bowing a little and saying, “すみません、コレンさん。You shouldn’t have to hear about this.”

“Oh, no,” Anna says before she can help herself, “this is fascinating.”

Katsuki turns bright red, and Viktor beams at her. “See? And what is this that I hear, that you do not talk about me?”

“Why would I talk to my students about my husband?”

Viktor clutches his chest as though he’s been wounded. “Do you not love me anymore, Yurochka? Have you forsaken me? Why won’t you speak of our love?”

“Because my job is to teach them Japanese, not talk about you.”

“Your job is always to talk about me,” Viktor tells him, sounding completely serious. “And think, if Tokyo had been 2018 instead of 2020—”

“I still would have gotten silver, and still wouldn’t have talked about it during my class.”

Anna blinks at both of them. “Are you talking about the Olympics?”

Viktor looks like she just asked him if he ate children. “Of course. Did you not know? Yurochka—”

“ _Viktor_ —”

“Won a silver medal in Pyeonchang in figure skating.”

“Oh,” Anna says, because what else do you say when you find out your Japanese TA is apparently an Olympian. She never got into the Winter Olympics. Her loss, apparently. “And who won gold?”

“Viktor did,” Katsuki tells her, and for the first time in this whole conversation he actually sounds happy. “I told him I wouldn’t marry him until he won gold, too.”

“That is not true,” Viktor says petulantly. “I won gold many times.”

Katsuki laughs, and she genuinely can’t tell if that had been a joke. “And Yurio won bronze, and pouted for days, but he will have 2022.”

“Yurio?”

“Plisetsky.” And his voice is casual, like he didn’t just tell her that the asshole Russian kid is also an Olympian, because apparently that’s a thing, the foreigner ice skating Olympian thing, and no, nope, she’s done with this conversation.

So she hands the phone back to Viktor, says, “I’m going to go cry about my life choices over there now,” and skates away to where Jesse is clutching on to the rink wall, three feet from the entrance.

“What was that about?” he asks when she gets to him.

Anna blinks at him for a minute, feeling like her brain was just liquified into mush, shaken up, and then reassembled by a four-year-old, then tells him, “I think I may have just hallucinated my entire life, or maybe just that conversation.”

“Huh,” he says finally. “That sounds…interesting.”

“It really was, Jesse. It really was.”

**Author's Note:**

> I think all of my Japanese is more-or-less correct (I need to study, but I confirmed basically all of it with the internet), but please correct me if you find any mistakes. Also, this was...something. I kind of want to write a Yuri POV for it, but I'm not sure if that'll happen.
> 
> Also Yuuri is getting a PhD in physics with a focus on the physics of figure skating.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [a community of thought, a rivalry of aim](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12650067) by [elumish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish)




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